A total of fifteen votes were used to score the current House on their views of social and defense related issues. All votes were taken from the 2005 year and the first session of the 109th Congress. If a Congressman was in office it was assumed that he or she could have voted on the legislation and not-voting was scored the same as voting against the position favored by the Freedom Democrats Scorecard. The obvious exception to this was Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the House, who does not traditionally vote. In the rare instances where he did vote, his vote was recorded by the scorecard and used to assign him a score. Scores were kept for both Congressmen in situations where representation of the district changed during the year. There was also one special case in which scoring was done by a different method, which is explained below.

Vote 1- Emergency Supplemental Appropriations, H.R. 1268. The House passed an emergency supplemental on March 16, 2005 by a vote of 388 to 43. This was the second largest supplemental appropriations bill in the nation's history and was passed as an "emergency" supplemental in order to avoid spending caps. Counter narcotic efforts in Afghanistan and a baseball stadium for DC are two examples of programs put in the bill. The scorecard’s position was against passage of the bill.

Vote 2- Udall Amendment on Uranium Subsidies, H.R. 6. This vote, which failed 204 to 225, was a clear case of the members of the House being given a chance to cut corporate subsidies. On April 21, 2005, Congressman Udall of New Mexico offered an amendment to the energy bill which would have removed language from the bill that would provide subsidies to the uranium industry. A vote for the amendment was a vote against wasteful spending.

Vote 3- Blumenauer Amendment on Sugar Loans, H.R. 2744. Few industries are as protected by government tariffs and subsidies as “Big Sugar.” This amendment, which would have cut the loans programs by a small 6%, would have been a first step in rolling back all of the patronage for the industry. The House rejected the amendment on June 8, 2005 in a 146 to 280 vote.

Vote 4- Trade Issues: Withdrawing from WTO, H.J.R. 27 and passage of DR-CAFTA, H.R. 3045. The scorecard takes a unique approach to balancing the two views of trade agreements and their benefits for liberty and less government. On the one hand some feel that they end up being a form of corporate welfare and a threat to national sovereignty, while others still believe that they represent the best way to approach the ideal of free trade. The scorecard decided to give both sides a fair say by looking at two votes and the consistency of the members of the House. The first, withdrawing from the WTO, was backed by Congressman Ron Paul of Texas and failed by a vote of 86 to 338 on June 9, 2005. The second was the passage of DR-CAFTA on July 28, 2005 by the narrow vote of 217 to 215. If a member of the House was consistent, either opposing both the WTO and DR-CAFTA or supporting both, they were considered to be voting with the scorecard. Flip-flopping on the issue of trade was viewed as a negative.

Vote 5- Hefley Amendment on Spending Cuts, H.R. 2862. Congressman Hefley of Colorado offered an amendment to the appropriations bill for Commerce, Justice, State, Science and other related agencies that would have cut spending across the board in those areas by 1%. Although across the board cuts are typically a blunt instrument, this amendment was favored because of the specifically wasteful nature of many of the agencies in these Departments. On June 16, 2005, the House voted against the amendment 91 to 336.

Vote 6- Sanders Amendment on Subsidizing Chinese Nuclear Power, H.R. 3057. When an amendment is strongly supported by a range of ideological views from Bernie Sanders and Dennis Kucinich to Ron Paul and Dana Rohrabacher it draws attention. This amendment prohibited the Export-Import Bank (which should be abolished anyway) from issuing loans to the construction of nuclear power plants in China. It's bad enough to subsidies corporate welfare domestically, but abroad is just absurd. The House adopted the amendment 313 to 114 on June 28, 2005.

Vote 7- Garrett Amendment on Eminent Domain, H.R. 3057. The social and defense scorecard contained two votes dealing with the Patriot Act because of the great importance placed on protecting the fundamental civil liberties of American citizens. In this scorecard special attention has been paid to the issue of eminent domain. With the recent ruling of the Supreme Court the property rights of American citizens are in grave danger. This amendment to the Transportation, Treasury and HUD appropriations bill, offered shortly after the Kelo decision, would prevent the use of federal transportation and HUD funding for local government programs that use eminent domain to acquire private property for private development. It passed on June 30, 2005 with a vote of 231 to 189.

Vote 8- Water Resources Development Act, H.R. 2864. The House approved funding for various projects under the administration of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on July 14, 2005 with a vote of 406 to 14. The bill did nothing to fix the fiscal mess of the projects and just threw more money at the problem. The scorecard was against the bill.

Vote 9- Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, H.R. 22. It should come as no surprise that this 'reform' bill wasn't a reform at all. The bill bails out the Postal Service without doing anything to change its monopolistic status. It passed 410 to 20 on July 26, 2005.

Vote 10- Energy Policy Act of 2005, H.R. 6. By a 275 to 156 vote, the House on July 28, 2005 approved an energy bill full of wasteful and harmful subsidies. Over the years energy subsidies, like agricultural subsidies, have skyrocketed out of control. The federal government needs to show restraint and start cutting these programs.

Vote 11- Transportation Equity Act, H.R. 3. On July 29, 2005 the House voted 412 to 8 to pass a large pork-filled transportation bill. The scorecard opposed the passage of the bill and believes that federal transportation policy in particular is one key area in which massive devolution should be encouraged.

Vote 12- Gasoline for America’s Security Act, H.R. 3893. Following the horrid Energy Policy Act of 2005 is the Gasoline for America’s Security Act. This bill had everything from subsidies to refineries to anti-'price gouging' legislation. The House narrowly approved the act on October 7, 2005 by a 212 to 210 vote.

Vote 13- Paul Amendment on Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, H.R. 1461. This amendment, if passed, would have eliminated the ability of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Home Loan Bank Board to borrow from the Treasury. These for-profit corporations should not be granted any special privileges over other institutions. The House rejected the amendment on October 26, 2005 by a vote of 47 to 371.

Vote 14- Agricultural Appropriations Act, H.R. 2744. On October 28, 2005, the House passed the Agriculture appropriations bill by a vote of 318 to 63. This bill exceeded the original budget resolution passed by the House earlier in the year. In order to pass the appropriations anyway the House passed a resolution to waive points of order against the bill. This resolution was done by a voice vote, so there's no list to use for the scorecard. But the passage of the appropriations bill, which was so large it exceeded the original budget resolution, is included on the scorecard.

Vote 15- Private Property Rights Protection Act, H.R. 4128. Two votes on the scorecard deal with attempts to restrict the ability of government to abuse eminent domain. This bill, which prevents federal funding of any state or local government project that uses eminent domain for private economic purposes, is the second of these two votes. It was approved by the House on November 3, 2005 by a vote of 376 to 38.

The score assigned to each member of the House was based on the percent of their potential votes in which they voted with the scorecard. This was based out of fifteen potential votes except for members who entered or left the House during its first session and the Speaker of the House. Results are viewable here in a text file ordered by score.

No member of the House received a perfect score. The two highest scores were Republican Ron Paul of Texas and Jeff Flake of Arizona, both with scores of 86.67%. Ron Paul was absent on two of the votes in the scorecard, while Jeff Flake voted against the scorecard twice: first in favor of the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations and then in favor of the Gasoline for America’s Security Act. Other highly scored members of the House included Republicans Ed Royce of California, Jeb Hensarling of Texas, John Shadegg of Arizona, and Walter Jones of North Carolina. All voted with the position taken by the scorecard greater than or equal to two thirds of the total votes. A few Democrats scored well by voting with the scorecard 60% of the time: Barbara Lee of California, Major Owens of New York, and Frank Pallone of New Jersey. An additional twelve Democrats and sixteen Republicans also scored over 50% on the scorecard.

On average the House Republican score was 31.80% and the average score for House Democrats was 34.98%. This nearly indiscernible difference between the two parties on economic issues is similar to previous scorecards in which the parties seem to be comparable, overall, on economic issues. The average score for the House was 33.33%. Only Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert of Illinois and former Republican Congressman Rob Portman, who resigned during the session, scored a zero.

This scorecard specifically excluded votes on tax cuts, an area where Republicans typically have an advantage over Democrats, because of the desire to place an emphasis on the importance of limiting the growth of government spending and ideally cutting spending as well. Tax cuts that fuel government deficits are not necessarily a recipe for less government; they may produce tax increases down the road as deficits are used to justify higher taxes as seen with both Bush Sr. and Clinton. Both parties overall have an abysmal record on economic issues when dealing with cutting spending and other issues not related to matters of tax cuts. The following graph illustrates how both parties perform poorly in fiscal matters.

Next I shall look at the two scorecards together to pick out members of the House worthy of praise. I will also include information about the potentially competitive elections of 2006 and who might be worthy of supporting for reelection or targeting for defeat.